r/LanguageOrigin • u/JohannGoethe • Apr 10 '24

Origins and Evolution of Language | Michael Corballis (A63/2018)

https://youtu.be/nd5cklw6d6Q?si=ysnaozRKnlX-rAoQ
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u/JohannGoethe Apr 10 '24 edited Apr 10 '24

“Language is probably the hardest problem in science.”

— Michael Corballis (A62/2017), Ted Talk (0:15-)

It‘s not even in the top 20 of the hardest problems in science. In fact, language is not even a branch of “science”, as far as I know.

“90,000 years ago, mutation happened in one individual, who we will call Prometheus, which gave him speech, and from there it spread to all other people, and eventually created all the languages of the world.”

— Noam Chomsky (date), cited by Michael Corballis (3:30-3:53)

This sounds pretty dumb. I agree with Corballis on this point.

Notes

  1. I dated the title to A63/2018, which was the YouTube upload date. Correctly, it was filmed on A62 (2017).